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Show EDITORIAL: Censorship Of History One would think that the world had enough to do without attempting to accomplish the impossible, im-possible, but with its mania for conferences and the belief that resolutions can settle problems, the futile effort to reform everything every-thing continues underway. In Germany, recently, at a world conference on comparative education, the illustrious delegates dele-gates urged the creation of an international commission to eliminate elim-inate nationalist prejudice and bias from history textbooks. This was done in the belief that this would develop a union of democratic nations. The suggestion to rewrite and supervise history textbooks came from a Clcrman. but his proposal received overwhelming support from delegates of all the countries coun-tries represented. Under the plan. an international committee would screen history books of material found objectionable for peaceful relations among nations. na-tions. Let us assume that the inter-national inter-national committee performs its task and that all history books are corrected to suit the ideas, prejudices and phobias of the members of the committee. What then? Nothing but that new writers will arise to give the people the "truth" and that the confusion will be worse than ever. Surely writers of history should present their facts fairly, in the interest of truth and elementary ele-mentary justice, but the end cannot can-not be achieved through the censorship cen-sorship of an international committee. |